BOOKS OF THE TIMES

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Garden of the Human Condition

By JANET MASLIN

Published: June 23, 2003

THE PROBABLE FUTURE

By Alice Hoffman

322 pages. Doubleday. $24.95.

It is the time of year when buds bloom and bees buzz and frogs skitter, while the rain pours and the warblers sing. In the midst of such darling fecundity, another of Alice Hoffman's flora-and-fauna-filled romances has ripened on the vine.

''Oh, scent of vanilla, of soapsuds, of Assam tea,'' Ms. Hoffman writes with gift-shop ecstasy in ''The Probable Future,'' her 16th novel. In a book so attuned to the olfactory sense that each page has a virtual aroma, be it water lily or ''the musk of the wild ginger in the woods,'' this author once again builds a bird's nest of homey details and happy coincidences. She invites the reader to join her on the porch swing of the human soul.

The overgrown ivy of Ms. Hoffman's prose can make this a smothering experience, especially for anyone who believes that redundancy warrants pruning. (''When darkness was falling and the warblers began to sing the last of their songs,'' it is ''late in the evening'' too.) And for those not about to count crab apple blossoms or care what bees do, this is surely the wrong cup of Assam tea. But to be fair, ''The Probable Future'' is better and more seamless than its contrived predecessor, ''Blue Diary.'' Horticultural and manipulative as she can be, Ms. Hoffman mostly succeeds in making this an organic story.

There is a plot hook of sorts: ''The Probable Future'' is about several generations of women in the Sparrow family, each of whom has a different witchy gift. One Sparrow could make soup out of rocks; one could walk through fire; one could stay underwater without breathing. Jenny Sparrow is able to dream other people's dreams. And her daughter Stella has an even spookier ability: Stella can tell when and how someone is destined to die.

Had this idea sprouted from the mind of Stephen King, it would of course mean a book full of corpses. But Ms. Hoffman dwells in the world of picturesque miracles, so the mayhem here is at a minimum. Stella predicts one little murder, with just enough prescience to get her good-for-nothing father, Will Avery, treated as a suspect. To avoid unwanted attention over this, Stella and her mother go back to the peach-scented small town of Unity, the Sparrows' ancestral home outside Boston.

''Jenny Sparrow,'' an old Unity acquaintance remarks, however unnecessarily. ''I guess all birds really do come home to roost.''

Back in Unity both the author and the book's three generations of Sparrow women (including Jenny's ailing mother, Elinor) are on cozily familiar ground. Here they can notice how the rose resembles the human heart. (''Some were wild, others were in need of constant care. Although many varieties had been transformed and tamed, no two were exactly alike.'') Here they can distinguish between different varieties of rain including ''fish,'' ''rose,'' ''daffodil,'' ''red clover,'' ''boot polish,'' ''swamp'' and ''stone.''

Here, too, they can discover the close ties between man and nature that give strong roots to Ms. Hoffman's better, less fussy work. The cycle of human life in ''The Probable Future'' moves from the kind of rapturous cosmic birth during which ''the cloudy sky cleared to reveal the silvery splash of the Milky Way, the heart of the universe'' to a touching, elegiacal vision of death with dignity. If Stella's intimations of mortality prove to be more like helpful warnings than dire predictions, the book does offer something beyond a mere thriller's concept of what it means -- for a plant, for a person -- to die.

There are other times when Ms. Hoffman's natural wisdom prevails: Jenny returns to her childhood home and feels like two people simultaneously, the adult that she has become and Stella, going to school just as Jenny used to. If this sounds like a distinctly womanly perspective, it is: this is a book in which a boy may fondly remember picking violets with his mother (which marks him as a nice person). Another character, a grown man, loves the way the bees share the landscape with him, tends a precious tree and puts in a Zen garden (which makes him even nicer).

Every loose end in ''The Probable Future'' is destined to be tied into a neat, decorous bow. If this is a book that marvels over a doll house with every tiny leaf on the forsythia bushes rendered in felt, it takes a no less craftsmanlike approach to the human condition. Thus true love is found, wrongs are righted, mistakes are acknowledged and disasters are allayed. Every loser, with the exception of the story's one deus ex machina murderer, has a chance to reform, pair off and win.

For readers who find this not just pleasant but also dusted with the pollen of philosophy, ''The Probable Future'' sincerely offers words to live by. And they aren't bad ones at that. ''Close your eyes and listen,'' Ms. Hoffman concludes, ''then walk 20 paces farther than you thought necessary. Just when you're certain you've lost your way completely, you'll be there. Open your eyes.''